Real
Estate Finance Notes
More on amortization
We
went over the kinds of payment arrangements you can have with a mortgage. There’s one more: you don’t have to amortize
the mortgage over the term of the mortgage.
You can do smaller payments but then pay off the rest of the total as a
lump sum at the end of the term: a “balloon” or “bullet”. This is primarily done when you have seller
financing due to the fact that interest rates are high or the buyer doesn’t
have enough money for the down payment.
The seller will finance the purchase price, but will only agree to
finance for five years or so.
When
you start out paying a mortgage, you’re paying mostly interest and little
principal, but then it gradually shifts over the term of the mortgage. Each month, the interest is getting smaller
because it’s calculated on the outstanding principal. The interest is calculated each month based
on what you owe at the time. As you pay
less interest, you take the difference and put it into playing for
principal. This makes up the amortization curve. The slope of the curve is relatively flat at
the top: you pay a lot of interest in the first few years and not so much
principal. But near the end, you’re
paying primarily principal rather than interest. You don’t have a month where you pay more
principal than interest until you get a good ways towards the end of the term. What does this say about refinancing? People do it all the time. When interest rates go down, people
refinance. But when you refinance, you
move back to the beginning of the curve!
Remember that the interest is tax-deductible, while the principal is
not. If you refinance and don’t take cash
out and you keep your payment the same, then you’ll end up better off: you’ll
pay off the loan faster. If you take
money out, you’re even worse off: it’s like you go further back than where you
started!
There
is a very strong policy (that Braunstein doesn’t understand) in favor of encouraging
people to buy houses. The idea is that
it’s good for people to own houses. It
may be good for people to own something,
but why houses in particular?
Historically, it may make sense with World War II veterans needing a
place to live. We wanted to enhance
their ability to buy houses. You can
argue that we overconsume housing: when you compare savings rates in the
You
can reduce your payments by reducing the amount of principal you borrow. You could also try to get a lower interest
rate. There are many programs designed
to reduce interest rates. For example,
the state borrows a bunch of money at 3-4% and then reloans it to home buyers
for 4-5%. The state makes a little money
and the homebuyer gets an interest rate lower than what they would be able to
get on their own.
Another
way to make the interest rate lower is to have the Fed fiddle with the interest
rate. The interest rate equals the true
cost of money (an absolutely safe investment, with no inflation, about 2-3%)
plus the inflation risk plus the cost of credit risk. The federal government may intervene to
reduce the risk of certain loans by insuring them, shifting the credit risk
from the mortgage lender to the federal government. Note that there have been mortgage devices
created to reduce inflation risk, like ARMs.
If you can adjust the rate of the mortgage every year based on an index,
then you take less of a risk with respect to inflation. Also, it doesn’t seem to make sense to pay
extra for a 30 year mortgage when you’re only going to live there for seven
years.
Also,
the longer you have to repay the loan, the less you’ll pay every month. However, the total cost of the mortgage will
also be greater over the life of the loan.
You could also change the amortization rate so that your monthly payment
is lower, but then you have the balloon/bullet coming at you at the end.
Structuring the transaction
What
options do the parties have in terms of the particular transaction, say a house
for $125,000? First, you can have a cash
sale. Buyer gives the money, the seller
gives the deed, the buyer records the deed, and that’s it. Second, you could have a cash sale while
paying off an existing mortgage. The
seller delivers the deed, the buyer pays the money. Then the seller goes and uses the cash to pay
off the mortgage. The buyer could get a new
loan and use it to pay cash. The buyer
secures the loan with the deed. The
buyer could also take over the seller’s old loan instead of having it paid
off. If the old loan was a good deal, the
buyer may want to keep it alive.
You
could also have seller financing, in whole or in part. The buyer could pay a cash down payment plus
a promissory note and mortgage for the balance in exchange with the deed to the
property (encumbered by the outstanding mortgage). In that situation, the seller wears two
hats. The seller basically is the same
person as the lender to the buyer. You
could combine seller financing and taking over an existing mortgage. If the buyer doesn’t have enough money for
the down payment, the buyer might take over the existing mortgage and then have
the seller finance the down payment. The
buyer could give the seller an additional
note and a second mortgage. “Second mortgage” refers to the priority with
which the mortgagees get paid off. These
priorities are based on time.
Finally,
we have wrapping around an existing mortgage loan. The terminology isn’t really helpful. This is really a combination of seller
financing and keeping the existing mortgage in effect. The difference is that the new mortgage is
for the total amount that’s being lent. The new, second mortgage will represent the
total purchase price minus whatever cash is paid. The second mortgage is for the full purchase
price less the down payment instead of the difference between the existing mortgage
and the new mortgage. The seller has the
advantage of being in control, because the buyer makes a payment that is
sufficient to pay the old mortgage and
the new one. Then the seller pays the
old lender. The seller knows if payments aren’t being made and
if a loan is about to go into default.
When the buyer does it, the seller may not find out about a default
until it’s too late to do anything about it.
For a wraparound to be beneficial, you must be able to keep the old loan
in effect, and that loan must have a lower interest rate than current market
rates. Both of those are highly
problematic in the current environment: wraparounds aren’t important right now.
How
does the seller make money on a wraparound?
The seller is really loaning $110,000 and really getting paid $885 a
month. What the seller is doing is not
loaning his own money: he’s reloaning
the money from the old lender at a higher interest rate. He’s borrowing money from the old lender at a
lower interest rate and then reloaning it at a higher rate. If the old loan was at 7% and reloan it at
9%, then you’re making a lot of interest on the “new money”. The return to the lender is quite high! At the same time, the interest rate paid by
the borrower is below market rate. The
borrower and seller do well, but the original lender suffers. Lenders will object to this! They’ll object to any situation where the
buyer takes the property encumbered by an existing loan when rates have gone
up. These were very popular when it was
harder for lenders to enforce “due-on-sale” clauses. Now, this kind of financing has become less
popular and valuable.
Schrader v.
Schrader
is the buyer and